Where are all the people defending "piracy" on this post?
How much effort were a few paragraphs that got copied vs how much effort does it take to produce a movie, or a professionally recorded song?
Plagiarism
71–80 of 326 posts
Re: Plagiarism
#72Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 Zee from TNW here. Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which…
Why do employees (and apparently CEOs) of online tech publications always seem to have so much trouble with basic English grammar/spelling? "I honestly absolutely no idea what we should have done differently" "We work immensely had to product original content"
I have a theory on this point, after witnessing this effect in a few other places (emails from prominent writers, CEOs, etc).
Writers write so much that their fear of shipping their writing is diminished through practice, so they write, ship, write, ship, write, ship. They're in creative mode, just putting words on the paper. They're busy, so they go quickly, so that they can get more done. They know that when it matters, they can copyedit—or have someone else proofread.
On the other hand, there are those of us who will spend an extra 5 minutes on every comment we post looking over it out of perfectionism or OCD or fear of the inevitable, "You sound like a moron" comment later in the thread.
I've taken to really admiring the type-type-type get a million emails/comments/tweets/posts out a day style.
Move fast and break things. Edit later.
Re: Plagiarism
#73Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 Zee from TNW here. Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which…
A case of poor timing, I think. TNW posts a non-attributed version of the article [1]. Author complains on twitter. Meanwhile, TNW notices the error and ninja-edits the post with proper attribution [2]. You check the updated post. Drama ensues on twitter. Edit. Oi, I'm not saying TNW is in the right, people. Just pointing out something that their CEO seems to have missed. [1]. http://cl.ly/0q1C3n1j323R3C131X0d/o [2].…
This doesn't change the fact that Zee was (pardon my language) a snarky asshole about it on Twitter.
Re: Plagiarism
#74I think the big sites that have been SEO'd to death (esp. HuffPo) don't have journalistic scruples; content is merely means to an end for them.
They've basically turned journalism into Demand Media - churn out SEO'd, cheap, content with the added bonus of sites like HN, Reddit etc adding SEO weight when they're lucky. It's even cheaper if someone else writes that content and they just have to reword the important bits.
It's sad to see HN starting to vote up AOL, Gawker etc crap, and it's sad to see other blogs adopting that model because it works so well.
Re: Plagiarism
#75Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 Zee from TNW here. Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which…
I'm not trying to be rude here, but as the CEO of an online magazine, why can't you write with correct grammar? "I honestly absolutely no idea…" "work immensely had to product"
They're called typos. Everybody makes them — even professional writers. In writing that's intended to make money, they're usually caught in editing. If you yourself write without ever producing a typo, that's nice, but it's not really all that important to the craft of writing — much less to owning a business that employs writers.
At any rate, I don't see any reason to expect perfect prose in an informal context like a comment thread. As long as you're understandable, what do you gain from spending more time on nit-picky details?
Re: Plagiarism
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
A case of poor timing, I think. TNW posts a non-attributed version of the article [1]. Author complains on twitter. Meanwhile, TNW notices the error and ninja-edits the post with proper attribution [2]. You check the updated post. Drama ensues on twitter. Edit. Oi, I'm not saying TNW is in the right, people. Just pointing out something that their CEO seems to have missed. [1]. http://cl.ly/0q1C3n1j323R3C131X0d/o [2].…
funnily enough...that is actually exactly what just happened and I literally (only seconds ago) discovered it. Will be putting a piece up about it soon.
Do you honestly not understand why even your "ninja-edited" version of the post is not acceptable?
Re: Plagiarism
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please pay attention to what else we're saying - that the second piece isn't acceptable, either.
yes I appreciate many of you agree a quote should have been included rather than an attempted rewrite. I agree, that would have been better. However, calling us out for plagiarism does feel far too extreme when the updated piece clearly states the source of the facts. The original piece only included links without a name and that I agree is 100% wrong. I hadn't seen that original piece before we were called out on tw…
It would be sort of funny if you included copy/pasted comments from HN in your PR-cleanup post.
Re: Plagiarism
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
A case of poor timing, I think. TNW posts a non-attributed version of the article [1]. Author complains on twitter. Meanwhile, TNW notices the error and ninja-edits the post with proper attribution [2]. You check the updated post. Drama ensues on twitter. Edit. Oi, I'm not saying TNW is in the right, people. Just pointing out something that their CEO seems to have missed. [1]. http://cl.ly/0q1C3n1j323R3C131X0d/o [2].…
This doesn't change the fact that Zee was (pardon my language) a snarky asshole about it on Twitter.
Hence the "drama".
Re: Plagiarism
#79Update: image credit added after I posted this. Still, the image should be removed, this is copyright infringement.
TheNextWeb is infamous for plagiarizing images for that section. Take this article, for example: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/23/stylish-techno...
The image at the top of the article is taken from this Dustin Curtis blog post: http://www.dustincurtis.com/press_on.html (the filename of the image is even Screen-shot-2011-07-10-at-12.08.40-PM-520x245.png). There is no reference to Dustin Curtis's blog at all on the page, either.
It is ridiculous that they find repeatedly doing this to be acceptable.
Re: Plagiarism
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesn't change the fact that Zee was (pardon my language) a snarky asshole about it on Twitter.
Hence the "drama".
To me, it's not about the Twitter drama; it's about the way The Next Web poorly cited this piece and revised it without fixing the issue people had with it in the first place.